Coaching is not an uncommon concept.

In sports, the role of the coach is key to the development of the individual athlete or team.

An athlete only has a coach if they have made a personal commitment to improve!

They recognize that they have an ability or a raw talent and they want to sharpen it to be better in their field.

What the coach will do is go through a process of helping the athlete connect with these abilities and draw them out, and this will lead to a passion filed and often times, independent training process.

In the corporate sector, Coaching is still growing.

Many professionals still do not have an identified person (who is not their line manager or even better, does not work within the same service) to coach them. Similar to the supervision process, Coaching is developmental as well as motivational, but to have no line manager would be unheard of in my sector, and the supervision process (or appraisal) is standard practice, however, coaching is still not common practice.

I want to encourage you, do not wait for coaching to become popular or for your employer to provide one.

So why should you get yourself a coach today? Here are the 7 reasons;

1. Accountability

I believe this is the most beneficial reason for having a coach. If you say you are going to do something, a good coach will follow it up with you, and if an agreed action is not followed through, they will want a reason why.
A coach will;

  • Talk openly and regularly about performance and push you to improve.
  • Encourage independent responsible for your behaviour and performance.
  • Want to explore and identify reasons for poor performance and aim to remove or at least reduce them.
  • Encourage you to evaluate your own performance on a regular basis.
  • Ensure you are clear about Goals, targets and expectations.

2. Focus

A good coach will support you in the development of a personal progress plan to clearly map out your development journey. They will also keep you focused as you work through each stage of that journey. When I am struggling with something, I get tempted to skip a stage and jump to the next stage. A coach will ensure that you do not move on until you have achieved the agreed goal and offer you the necessary support and motivation required to get you through.

3. Motivation

So what is motivation, exactly? I think at the core of motivation can be summed up thus; “At some point, the pain of not doing it becomes greater than the pain of doing it.” In other words, at some point, it is easier to change than to stay the same. It is easier to take action and feel insecure at the gym than to sit still and experience self-loathing on the couch. It is easier to feel awkward while making the sales call than to feel disappointed about your dwindling bank account.

This, I think, is the essence of motivation. Every choice has a price, but when we are motivated, it is easier to bear the inconvenience of action than the pain of remaining the same. Somehow, we cross a mental threshold—usually after weeks of procrastination and in the face of an impending deadline—and it becomes more painful to not do the work than to actually do it.

Now for the important question: What can we do to make it more likely that we cross this mental threshold and feel motivated on a consistent basis?

4. Resources

The right coach will bring with them a range of tools and techniques to help you achieve your goals. They will also have a good network of links and be willing to share them with you. This could include a library of books, audio and video resources, useful online resources and most importantly People.

5. A Different Perspective

When you are in the heat of the game, you need a coach on the outskirts with a wider perspective of the whole field. A good coach will enable you to come up with a fresh approach to a problem. Sometime we allow emotion to blur our vision and sway our decision, but a coach does not have that emotional attachment and will give you an objective point of view.

6. Challenge

Sometime, due to the closeness of a relationship, your friends, partners, family or work colleagues will not challenge you, as they do not want to ‘Rock the boat.’ However, a good coach will challenge you in a number of ways.

  • They will challenge you to push yourself and to go the extra mile.
  • They will challenge any poor performance and slacking.
  • They will challenge your ideas in the aim of getting you to dig deeper.
  • They will challenge a negative attitude and a defeatist mind-set.

7. A sounding board

At times, you find it difficult to find someone you can share your deepest thoughts with. Whether it is new idea, a fear or concern or just something you’re grappling with, a coach will provide a safe environment for you to talk things through and give you honest, impartial feedback.

Your time with your coach will be time to focus on you and your development and your coach will take your aspirations as seriously as you do. When you begin your relationship, you and your coach should have a discussion about confidentiality, so you both know where you stand with what is shared during your sessions.